time

The ultimate skill of the truly creative person is their ability to survive change no matter how varied it may be.

Acquiring and then expertly utilizing already structured knowledge is the attribute of the very learned.

The creative person is uniquely interested in newness.

That, coupled with a passion for what they do, fires a gut-drive infused with persistence that sustains a vision that never changes.

It’s different than a dream.

It makes the timeline from start to finish, even if it’s very long (and it often is), seem more bearable.

Even when it looks like failure is following failure yet again this drive wins out because it won’t let them give up easily.

Another word for a creative person like that is “entrepreneur”.

In the 1920’s, and for many years after, Napoleon Hill interviewed one hundred and twenty-five of the most financially successful men of his day.

Know what he discovered? The top two attributes for their success was their persistence and determination. Not intelligence or connections. Too bad Hill himself never nailed down exactly what the nature of persistence and determination was and how to get more of it into your life. He instead got wrapped up in laws and lists of principals. More head brain work for you to do.

All that is a far cry from finally finding out what exactly it is that allows some to survive long periods of discomfort and to maintain a motivation through it all. For creatives who want to ‘make it’ on their own terms it’s as essential as air.

Back in the day the pop rock group the Rolling Stones recorded a song titled “Time Is On My Side”. Its message underscored the fact that time as a measurement lies at the very foundation of our life’s experience on this big ball of mud we call planet Earth.

Every day we use time as a scale of comparison between the good times and the not-so-good times. Myself, as I get older, arrive at a place where the unknown quantity of the time that I have left spikes dramatically in its perceived value. This is one reason why it troubles me greatly to learn that a growing number of individuals, many of them young people, somehow see that time’s value for themselves is almost worthless and thus take the drastic terrifyingly final and irreversible step to short it out completely.

The power of time’s value is expressed in other ways too. Doctors, for example, try to give their patients more time while our penal system takes away a prisoner’s freedom and uses time as punishment for crimes they’ve committed.

But for most of us these days we feel time racing by never to be reclaimed. “There isn’t enough time in a day” the busy person says. “Why is this taking so long? asks another as she waits for her computer to download a file.

In business school we’re told that cash-flow is king. But that monarchy pales in the presence of the exalted dominion that time has on our hearts and minds.

It all boils down to this: If you have something of value to contribute to the world then do it now.

The timing is just right.

More power to you.
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